Film that left me sobbing for the little girl I lost: LINDSAY NICHOLSON on the teenage cancer movie that's leaving parents in tears, too

My family and friends begged me not to see it: The Fault In Our Stars — the heartbreaking tale of two terminally ill teenagers who meet at a cancer support group — is the most talked-about film of the moment.

But even those whose lives have not been as blighted by cancer as mine has have found it almost too harrowing to bear.

Why would I, of all people, want to watch it and risk triggering so many traumatic memories?

Inspired by a teen-fiction bestseller by novelist John Green, the film took £3.4 million on its opening weekend in the UK, putting it at the top of the movie charts.

In the U.S., where it has been on general release since the beginning of the month, there has been a furore on social media, split between those who hail Green as a genius daring to tread where authors of ‘young adult’ books have not gone before, and those who say the novel is part of a trend for ‘sick-lit’ made even more cynical on the big screen.

So which is it?

Despite the well-meant warnings, I felt I had to see it. Cancer has devastated my family. My first husband, the journalist John Merritt, died from it aged just 35 in 1992.

Then, six years later, I received the devastating news that our nine-year-old daughter had contracted the same incredibly rare form of leukaemia as her father. She lived only eight months after diagnosis.

Fortunately our younger daughter Hope, now 21, was not affected by the rogue gene, but I had a brush with the disease myself when I was found to have breast cancer seven years ago, from which I am now thankfully free.

So, you may well ask what was I doing spending a free evening reliving all that pain and loss?

I suppose partly it was that, having spent so much time on cancer wards, I’ve yet to see any book or film that portrays not only the sadness but also the joy, hope, love and humour that you find in those places — the idea that, as the inspirational cancer sufferer Stephen Sutton MBE maintained up to his recent death, life doesn’t have to be long to have meaning.

Popular culture has seemed unable to move on from Love Story — the 1970 sob-fest starring Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal — that portrayed the cancer sufferer as simply a pale, characterless victim who existed only to make other people more noble before dying a neat and tidy death.

I was told that The Fault In Our Stars breaks away from that convention, not least because Green had worked in a children’s hospital and knew the reality.

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The Fault In Our Stars - the heartbreaking tale of two terminally ill teenagers who meet at a cancer support group - is the most talked-about film of the moment

So I started by reading the book, which has been on the New York Times bestseller list for two years since it was published in 2012. Nervous at first, I consumed it in one sitting, tears pouring down my face.

The narrator is the delightful 16-year-old Hazel Grace, who has stage 4 — ie, terminal — cancer. Her character was inspired by a meeting Green had with a young cancer sufferer from Massachusetts, who sadly did not live long enough to see the book published.

This is, at last, a proper account of what it’s like to live in the ‘Republic of Cancervania’, as the fictional heroine calls the sometimes bizarre world in which young cancer patients find themselves.

She is hilarious about well-meaning but cringe-making support groups; brutally honest about the fact that, while many nurses are angels, there are also those who can’t find a vein in which to inject the toxic chemicals they are entrusted with; and resigned to the growing distance with former friends.

This isn’t just about teenagers. The effect on parents of years of living in fear is also explored. As Hazel says: ‘There is only one thing in this world sh***ier than biting it from cancer when you’re 16, and that’s having a kid that bites it from cancer.’

Well, I beg to differ on that one, but it’s true that a high proportion of marriages break up after the death of a child, heaping more anguish on an already agonising situation, and it helps to be honest about that, too.

Most moving of all, though, is the way that the children who suffer from cancer have to fight not only against their illness but also for any normality in their lives.

And — even more painfully — how hard it becomes for their healthy schoolfriends to relate to them as the disease progresses. I remember this so well with my daughter Ellie, who longed to have just one ordinary day at school but was always too unwell. Instead she formed strong friendships with the other children on the ward.

Very few of them have made it to adulthood, but I like to remember them as they played mad games of hide-and-seek all over the ward and raced each other down the corridors, dragging their drip trolleys behind them — not to mention ordering random pizza deliveries knowing that a parent would pay up, and playing pranks on the nurses by going walkabout just before the consultant’s rounds.

Ellie, in particular, liked to crank up her hospital bed to its highest level so no one could reach her and she could read and watch TV uninterrupted several feet off the ground.

I have been on adult cancer wards where even those with a good prognosis, for whom their stay would only be an unpleasant blip, didn’t show a fraction of the optimism and zest for life of those terminally ill kids.

Her school was brilliant, organising trips for groups of classmates to her bedside at Great Ormond Street and keeping a diary of pictures and stories about school activities that they sent to her each week. They were flying blind because no one had ever taught the teachers how to deal with such an agonising situation.

Already, The Fault In Our Stars has built up such a following that the trailer alone has been viewed nearly 20¿million times worldwide

Her illness was incredibly hard for them to bear, too — only recently I was in touch with her form teacher, who, 16 years on, says she still cries at the memory of my beautiful auburn-haired daughter who loved to write stories and always sought out the most shy member of the class to befriend.

Once, so little could be done for children who suffered dreadful diseases that, after the initial ghastly diagnosis and rush to hospital, they had little further contact with their previous life. But now, as survival rates improve, children and young adults suffering from cancer and other serious diseases are thankfully able to spend more time at home and even continue in school.

With a survival rate as high as 98 per cent for some forms of childhood leukaemia, there is every chance that many will make a full recovery. But other diseases remain stubbornly hard to treat and even 98 per cent is not 100 per cent — so every city, town and village is, to some extent, Cancervania.

I strongly believe that the only emotionally healthy way to deal with illness, and even premature death, is to acknowledge that, while tragic, it is still a part of life.

Or, as John Green put it in an interview: ‘It’s easier to think of sick people as “other”. But if you’re alive, you are as alive as anybody else, and the full breadth of human existence is available to you.’

Already, The Fault In Our Stars has built up such a following that the trailer alone has been viewed nearly 20 million times worldwide. When I saw it at a London shopping mall, I was easily 30 years older than anyone else in the audience.

It was obvious that all the young fans — mostly girls but some boys — knew the book backwards because some of them were saying the most important lines — ‘The world is not a wish-granting factory’ — along with the young stars Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort.

The Fault In Our Stars tells the moving love story of terminal cancer patient Hazel, played by Shailene Woodley, and Augustus (Ansel Elgort), a survivor who lost his leg to the disease

The film is faithful to the book and well made. At the screening I saw there was not just sniffling but wrenching sobs — from me, too — as it portrayed in vivid detail some of the most heartbreaking moments of my life. In that respect it wasn’t easy to watch.

Some of the teens were still crying as we filed out. ‘Man, that was hard,’ said one, rivers of mascara streaming down her cheeks. But then they dried their tears and skipped off to Nando’s for supper. Yes, they had been upset — as I was — but definitely not exploited.

They had experienced the deep power of storytelling and maybe, who knows, might be inspired to have a cake sale or do a sponsored walk for the Teenage Cancer Trust or Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research as a result.

Most importantly, if they get to school tomorrow morning and hear in assembly that one of their classmates has been rushed to Great Ormond Street, the Birmingham Children’s Hospital or the Royal Manchester, they will have a far greater understanding of what that means and — crucially — how to continue to be a good friend to the kid going through it. And if the worst happens they will have some idea of how to cope with that, too.

Even though it was traumatic, I am not sorry I watched The Fault In Our Stars. Indeed, I would recommend it to all teachers and parents. I know some will find it too much. After all, as I have experienced and as the film makes clear, we adults are rarely as tough as our kids.